Repeat-Customer Centricity starts with Employees
Our experience at the Skift Global Forum highlighted the need to re-prioritize employee experience as a means to customer experience optimization.
Recurring revenue businesses are a bit closer to their customers by necessity but not always by design. An inherent customer familiarity sometimes gets in the way of operating with a truly intentional customer-centric approach throughout the organization. In this newsletter, we’ll examine what makes better customer centricity for a repeat-customer product business (subscription, loyalty, membership and any business that wants customers to come back) and how executives can start or optimize the effort in a meaningful way.
As we’ve stated before, the benefits of customer centricity are well documented: category performance leadership, with more loyalty and more advocacy. And while most everyone agrees that customer centricity is essential, many still struggle with execution. We’ve found there are common barriers to overcome, continuing with this series, we’ll dig into the second item below and tackle the rest in future newsletters…
Building a Common Understanding - Clarify what real customer centricity entails across the organization.
Incorporating Employee Experience - Your people create your customer experiences, make it good for them to make it better for customers.
34% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, up from 32% in 2022 but remote employees’ connection to their organization’s purpose is declining so Managers must use meaningful interactions to build engagement
A strong organizational culture brings improved customer value
Breaking Down Silos - Enable collaboration on customer journeys across teams. Share insights cross-functionally.
Rethinking Metrics - Incentives and KPIs need to align to customer retention and lifetime value, not just short-term revenue.
Long(er)-Term Mindsets - Resist pressure to over-optimize for immediate revenue at the cost of CX.
Closing the Feedback Loop - Act on robust voice of customer programs and inform strategy discussions.
Accountability and Consistency - Set customer-centric goals and track them. Audit practices across the organization.
Your people create your customer experiences, make it good for them to make it better for customers.
The Skift team at Skift Global Forum 2023
Skift is the leading travel industry news, research, and events company. Having started in 2012 they’ve captured a valuable position in the global travel industry — a significant start up story when you consider the recent challenges in the travel, events, and media sectors. While travel is coming back strong, events are picking up and media continues to struggle, Skift is navigating a confident course for reasons apparent to those looking behind the scenes at their most recent event — their team is happy.
Airline, hotel, cruise and travel tech CEOs sat on stage beaming about their rebounding businesses, the critical importance of customer experience, and human connectedness in the upcoming age of AI, while news was breaking about Delta’s fumbled loyalty program update and Expedia’s decision to deprive Hopper of inventory. The customer losing out to corporate priorities in both cases.
At the same time attendees of the conference were reveling in the content and the community of a great event delivered by the Skift team, who were providing a silent masterclass on customer centricity and the importance of employee engagement as a means to customer experience success. All of Skift’s employees from around the globe were in attendance, from the friendly check-in to the challenging interviews on-stage and the warm social connections, the Skift team delivered against their event plans so successfully that it would have gone unnoticed except by those of us fascinated with employee experience and engagement.
Employee engagement is a deep topic with many thought leaders to learn from, as an aside I recommend them below, but we’re here to explore employee experience (EX) creating employee engagement to the benefit of repeat customer experience (CX)…
William Kahn - Professor at Boston University's School of Management. He introduced the term "employee engagement" in 1990 in the Academy of Management Journal. His research focuses on the psychological experiences of work.
Gallup - Gallup's research popularized the study of employee engagement through their Q12 survey. Gallup analysts like Jim Harter continue to publish research reports on the impact of engagement.
David Zinger - Leading consultant and blogger on employee engagement. He founded the Employee Engagement Network and publishes resources on his website.
Kevin Kruse - Forbes contributor and bestselling author on employee engagement. His book "Employee Engagement 2.0" outlines his insights.
Jacob Morgan - Author of "The Employee Experience Advantage" and founder of Future of Work University. Focuses on EX and engagement.
Amy Leschke-Kahle - VP at The Marcus Buckingham Company. Developed the standout strengths-based engagement methodology.
Dan Pink - Author of "Drive" highlighting the role of motivation and purpose in engagement. Known for his unconventional insights.
Shawn Achor - Researcher on positive psychology and the connection to engagement. Author of "The Happiness Advantage."
How can employee experience create engaged employees and impact repeat customer experience?
A lot has been said about the benefits of customer-facing employee engagement on customer experience, that’s something of a no-brainer for most of us in a consumer product businesses with frontline employees. Massive EX programs can drive CX improvement, for sure:
Companies with high employee engagement scores tend to score higher in customer satisfaction as well. Engaged employees directly influence customer perceptions and the overall customer journey.
Engaged employees are more passionate about their work and motivated to go above and beyond for customers. Their positive attitude and energy creates a better experience for customers.
Engaged employees have a deeper understanding of products/services and can provide better recommendations and service to customers. Their product/industry knowledge helps them answer questions and solve problems more effectively.
Engaged employees are more likely to take initiative to delight customers, like following up proactively, offering additional assistance, or providing personalized recommendations. Going the extra mile for customers enhances their experience.
But the real challenge, as noted in the Delta and Expedia examples above, those needing the EX to create better downstream CX are often the office-bound employees whose engagement with the company is largely driven by financial performance.
Engaged employees are brand ambassadors who build an emotional connection with customers through authentic interactions. Customers have better experiences dealing with happy, enthusiastic employees.
Engaged employees are invested in the company's success and understand their role in delivering excellent customer experiences. They are constantly looking for ways to improve processes to benefit customers.
Project Boomerang—has helped shape what has become one of the biggest makeovers of Uber’s business since its inception in 2009.
Boardroom employees stepping into the role of the frontline worker is almost always enlightening, Undercover Boss proves is entertaining at the very least. Recently this WSJ article highlighted the efforts at Uber and Lyft:
After 5 years running Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi got behind the wheel himself. Mr. Khosrowshahi’s moonlighting was part of a campaign to better understand and improve Uber’s experience for drivers
Lyft was slower to introduce new driver-friendly features and bonuses. It lost market share to Uber, and its stock valuation declined by billions of dollars.
Driver engagement at Lyft dropped after Uber’s summer rollout, according to people close to Lyft. The company’s product managers scrambled to match Uber’s changes, replicating many features months later.
The results are almost always transformational, having stepped into the shoes of a customer-facing employee, an exec gains a whole new perspective on the business and what can be done to improve the employee experience so that they’re more engaged and better able to deliver on the company’s promise to its customers.
How can this perspective be maintained and integrated into the executive’s process and mindset?
First, in businesses with frontline employees, office-bound execs should regularly shadow or apprentice in those roles. It’s not just the CEO’s responsibility to play the part of a frontline staff member.
Second, office-bound employees should absolutely be customers of the product. If that’s not a natural fit, the company needs to create realistic role-playing to emulate the actual customer experience on a regular basis.
Third, customer research is cheaper and faster than ever before. An exec team should be looking at the latest customer insights as frequently as they’re looking at the latest performance data. (here’s how WaPo does research)
Fourth, implement an empathetic approach to work processes that require execs to approach their responsibilities with the customer in mind. This is where persona’s can be really helpful as a tool to connect to the idea of an individual as a sum of their traits rather than a table of datapoints.
And finally, build a framework for growth strategies that puts the customer needs on equal footing with the business needs.
